Park to National Park

Make it move! Paper engineering I like to think of it, these are some of the cleverest cards around, definitely beating anything you can buy, but they do often take a while to make. So, find some quiet time if you can and sit down and make one for this week's challenge at The Male Room. There re loads of ideas on the Internet, here is one I tried for the first time.

It's kind of like an unfolding present. Here I went for loads of texture and a theme of back to nature from the built up landscape. So, the front of my card uses brick and grass DP and a piece of guilded embossed card to look like metal, with a faux leather cover to the fold out bit. A town park in miniature.

And inside there are rocks and wood. I used a bold sentiment stamp from Delightful Dozen and left one panel bare for writing a message to the recipient.

Too arty? I am often looking for a theme these days to inspire my card making. I did have fun with this one and used up a few scraps, which is always good. If you want to try the challenge here it is

I Think I'm Turning Japanese.....

A little bit of zen going on my blog this morning, well, that was my inspiration for my card for The Male Room, where the new challenge is to create a masculine project inspired by the Orient.

I wanted to create a zen garden on a card

I used Adventure Bound DP to cover the front of the card. I blended various greens and blues to make the water and splodged on some water droplets to create rain drops on water effect. The two fish are from a magazine freebie set, as are the Chinese characters.

I added a touch of gold to the fish and some die cut leaves to overhang the 'pond'

The layers are black and gold and inside I have made a liner and stamped the greeting, with what looks like a Chinese or Japenese translation (it's not really, that would be very impressive!)

I used a sentiment from Wetlands, very appropriate!

Hope you get chance to play along and create something masculine and Oriental....think sushi, karate, samurai, lanterns, anything you like!

Thanks, Man!

i have a vintage style thank you card this morning to share. As its for The Male Room Challenge it is, of course, designed for a man with more than a little help from the sketch over at The Paper Players.

This card started life as a technique workshop, where we used dark card stock, embossed and rubbed over with a metallic ink pad, to resemble metal work. Here it is black card and a copper coloured ink on a printing press themed embossing folder ( no idea which brand as I borrowed it on the evening)

I have used this as a top layer, and put some vintage K&Co paper behind it. The banner is stamped with a sentiment from Vintage Verses- I used Chocolate Chip on Kraft card.

I have made a small mat from some DP, from Adventure Bound- these are brilliant papers for masculine cards, and added a small Kraft tag with a stamped vintage car image. I sponged all the edges of the layers with Crumb Cake

The finishing touch is a little clock hand added to point to the sentiment and I've used a small Brad to attach it.

Adventure Bound Birthday

Back up to speed now with my second card this week, this time for the sketch challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. I've had a couple of weeks off, but I have seen the challenges and all the fab CAS cards you all have been making. This week we have a great sketch to play with

I recently bought the DP set Adventure Bound, specifically to make cards for men for my other DT challenge blog, The Male a Room, but I thought it would work well with this sketch. Having had a quick look on the internet I took some inspiration from there and....

This is one whole sheet of the DP, isn't it fab? I added the Happy sentiment cut out using the Hello You thinlet die and instead of a banner I,ve used twine, twisted three times. The Bithday part of the sentiment is from Best Dad Ever and is stamped on vellum which I have torn and secured with a small brad. Layered onto Kraft my card is finished.

Two more views.

The second card, made using the sketch and the same DP set follows the sketch a little more closely. I started by stamping and heat embossing the sentiment from Big Day onto a different piece of DP

I made the banner using the set Happy Congratulations and as the twine was still on the table I added a couple of bits at the end to carry the bunting off the edge slightly. After stamping and punching out the lanterns I added a touch of Dazzling Details to add a shimmer effect on them and used foam pads to add dimension.